Meta

Tag: Shuriken

I know an acquaintance, whose name I will protect, who uses “Garage Band” on his Mac, but who has a hard time imagining that there exist many, many different programs like it, for other platforms, and that there must exist such, in order for professional musicians also to have access to a great array of such tools.

Of greater relevance is the fact, that such software exists under Linux as well – not just on Macs or PCs – as well as under Android.

And there is one observation which I would like to add, about what form this takes if users and artists wish to do audio work using Free, Open-Source applications.

Typically, we can access applications that do most of the work that polished, commercial examples offer. But one area in which the free applications do lag behind, is in the availability of sample packs – aka loops – which some artists will use to construct songs.

If Linux developers were to offer those, they would probably also need to ask for money.

Further, Garage Band has it as a specific advantage, that if such loops are simply dropped into the project, this program has the tempo stored, with which that loop was playing by default, in addition to which all DAWs have the tempo of the project set and available. Garage Band will automatically time-stretch the loop, to adapt to the project tempo. Most of the DAW programs I know, do not do this automatically.

A common ability the open-source applications offer though, is to time-stretch the sample manually after importing it, which can be as easy as shift-clicking on one of the edges of the sample and dragging it.

In order for this to be intuitive, it is helpful if the sample has first been processed with a Beat Slicer, so that the exact size of the rectangle will also snap into place with the timing marks on the project view, and the sample-tempo will match the project-tempo.